Musician Photography Bridgeport, PA: Brodi Valos & Gethin Lewis

Relaxing in Nags Head

After spending some quality time relaxing and shooting some photos in the small coastal town of Nags Head in the beautiful Outer Banks of North Carolina I hooked up with Brodi and Gethin on my drive home to shoot some photos for general purpose use and for promotional material for their music.

When driving for 7+ hours it is sweet relief to have a break worked into your driving plans. Mine came as I rolled into Bridgeport, PA. It was a brisk, cool evening and the light was amazing. All the photographs I shot using a single light on a stand an toyed with what I could using the ambient light (what little there was) in the scene.

Brodi Valos

Brodi Valos is a talented and perpetually hard working musician/recording artist who performs throughout the Mid-Atlantic region with Philadelphia-based group Dirty Electrick. Brodi, who himself hails from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is recognized for his roots rock sense of style in fashion, performance, and in his music videos.

Inspired by classic music icons such as AC/DC, The Rolling Stones, & Ray Charles, and even my all-time favorite group, Social Distortion, Brodi creates a wonderful blend of Rock and Country in his tracks that you’re sure to enjoy.

Did He Just Say 'Ron Paul'?

Brodi is a man after my own spirit and, like myself, views Dr. Ron Paul as the best of the candidates for presidential election in the upcoming 2012 Presidential election as we rapidly approach the conclusion of the Republican Natl. Primaries.

Gethin Lewis is a musician and guitarist from Philadelphia, PA who, along with playing music with Brodi, creates his own Psychedelic brand of music. A great personality and a bunch of fun to photograph!

We had a great time hangin’ out and shooting these photos and spent some time chatting after we put the camera down. Check out some of my favorites below!

Simplify! Man!

Often as a photographer, I get far to caught up in the gadgets and gear that make my work possible and as they distract me from the fundamentals of why and how I shoot, I start to lose a little bit of what gives my work a "shot by Nathaniel Dodson" feel.

I’d venture so far as to say this happens to most photographers, but when this gadget-ism strikes I pony-up and strike back by heading out to a shoot with only a single fixed length lens and a reflector as my light! This is just to force myself to make due with what I have and use the light available to ensure I am not “losing my touch” on the basic essentials of how I shoot… this is of course assuming that I have some kind of touch in the first place (debatable). Stepping back and simplifying in both design and photographic work can be greatly beneficial! I love it!

She's a Fashion Designer... or a Rockstar

Kelli is a local working Fashion Designer who also has a passion for modeling. We got together to shoot some photographs and had an easy-breezy time capturing a few nice frames. She was great!

Simplifying...

Getting together with Kelli I had previously decided that I would be significantly lightening my gear and carrying only a few things out onto location in an effort to focus on simplifying my approach –which had started getting a little out of hand. (Note: I brought one light with me for this shoot, an Elinchrom Ranger Quadra with the 39" Deep Octa Softbox.)

Below are a few of the photographs we captured. My shot(s) of the day turned out to be a series of black and white fashion photos which I absolutely love.

Distinct Pleasure

Yasmine is an talented and beautiful young Egyptian/Moroccan/Turkish college student(/model) attending college right here in Eastern Pennsylvania. I had the distinct pleasure of working with her about 2 months ago shooting some general purpose portraits and was delighted with how they turned out!

There was a bit of rain in the forecast for the date we'd picked to setup the shoot, but decided to press on and make it happen rain or shine! Typically when a shoot gets cancelled due to the weather forecast, the weather man ends up being wrong and we get beautiful weather, it's only when we decide to ignore the forecast that the forecast stands true!
We ended up with a very cloudy sky that morning and there was a brisk breeze which occasionally cut through our location all the while we were shooting further enhancing the cool/damp early-autumn air and, in the end, combining to make beautiful shooting weather throughout our shoot. It worked out wonderfully and we got lots of very soft, wrapping light! Photographer's dream!

Clean Fashion Style with Nikki

I am preparing for a series I want to shoot over the course of the winter which was inspired by a specific type of advertising (It's a secret!). In my preparation I had a model come in and shoot with me as I nailed down some of the final lighting tweaks, hair and make up issues, as well as worked the post-shoot, post production workflow to ensure a consistency in the looks produced by the various shoots for the series. Nikki came out and shot with me and was absolutely great!

Portfolio Building

Getting together and shooting for a couple hours in the late evening often yields some pretty awesome results. Here we have a young model I photographed a few weeks ago in King of Prussia to help him build his portfolio with a variety of looks (we had a few other looks, but these few images happened to be my favorite).

Twilight is Golden Light

We hung around in the park where we were shooting until the sun set below the horizon and took advantage of some electric color in the sky, that coupled with some passing storm clouds which further added to the amazing color we had that evening.

Check out a few of the photos we captured below and I threw in a happy mistake which I converted to black and white. Sometimes complete mistakes turn out great!

No Location, No Plans, Creativity At Its Finest

It’s a great change up to go out and have a fun morning or evening of photography without any idea of what you’re going to shoot until you get into a location, or a general area and wander until you find a location. I photographed Rachel a few weeks ago and we picked out her clothing and met on a street corner in the city and just wandered around taking as many photos as we liked until it was too dark to shoot.

Photography and Creative Control

What little plan I had going into this photo shoot was to just keep it simple and shoot some general purpose portraits of her. She didn’t have anything specific she needed other than general purpose head and full-length shots for a project she was working on and there was no strict set idea of what she had to have so that left plenty of room for creative liberty and control.

Camera, Lighting, and Technical Settings

Lighting was a Canon 580 EXII speedlite modified with Westcott’s amazing 28” Apollo portable (collapsing, umbrella style) softbox and a hand held reflector for a little fill as needed. Everything was shot using a 24-70mm lens and I believe I stayed between f4 and f8 all evening long.

Thanks Rach!

All things considered Rachel killed it, she was awesome and we got some great photos to show for it. Good times.